1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laminated inductor.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method of manufacturing a laminated inductor has been traditionally known, which comprises printing internal conductor patterns on ceramic green sheets containing ferrite, etc., and then stacking the sheets on top of one another and sintering the stacked sheets.
Patent Literature 1 describes a method of manufacturing a laminated chip inductor formed by pressure-bonding and sintering an unsintered ceramic laminate in which a conductor pattern has been formed. According to the manufacturing method disclosed in Patent Literature 1, an auxiliary magnetic material layer is provided at least on magnetic green sheets around the conductor pattern, and the thickness of the auxiliary magnetic material layer after sintering becomes larger than the thickness of the conductor pattern after sintering.
There has been a demand for electrical current amplification for laminated inductors (i.e., offering higher rated currents) in recent years, and to meet this demand, changing the type of magnetic material from ferrite as traditionally used, to soft magnetic alloy, is being considered. Proposed soft magnetic alloys such as Fe—Cr—Si alloy and Fe—Al—Si alloy have a higher saturated magnetic flux density compared to conventional ferrite. On the other hand, these materials have a substantially lower volume resistivity compared to conventional ferrite.